Skip to main content
Modern Philosophers
All books

Book

Available now

Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

The selection covers a range of topics, including critiques of contemporary writers, explorations of beauty in art, and thoughts on morality and existence.

"Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde" by Oscar Wilde is a collection of essays and critiques. The selection covers a range of topics, including critiques of contemporary writers, explorations of beauty in art, and thoughts on morality and existence.

What you get

  • The book as EPUB, PDF, delivered to your library after payment.
  • Bought on its own: yours to keep.

Read a passage

Art begins with abstract decoration, with purely imaginative and pleasurable work dealing with what is unreal and non-existent. This is the first stage. Then Life becomes fascinated with this new wonder, and asks to be admitted into the charmed circle. Art takes life as part of her rough material, recreates it, and refashions it in fresh forms, is absolutely indifferent to fact, invents, imagines, dreams, and keeps between herself and reality the impenetrable barrier of beautiful style, of decorative or ideal treatment. The third stage is when Life gets the upper hand, and drives Art out into the wilderness. That is the true decadence, and it is from this that we are now suffering.

Contents

  1. 01Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde
  2. 02Dedication
  3. 03Preface
  4. 04How They Struck a Contemporary
  5. 05The Quality of George Meredith
  6. 06Life the Fallacious Model
  7. 07Life the Disciple
  8. 08Life the Plagiarist
  9. 09The Indispensable East
  10. 10The Influence of the Impressionists on Climate
  11. 11An Exposure of Naturalism
  12. 12Thomas Griffiths Wainewright
  13. 13Wainewright at Hobart Town
  14. 14Cardinal Newman and the Autobiographers
  15. 15Robert Browning
  16. 16The Two Supreme and Highest Arts
  17. 17The Secrets of Immortality
  18. 18The Critic and His Material
  19. 19Dante the Living Guide
  20. 20The Limitations of Genius
  21. 21Wanted a New Background
  22. 22Without Frontiers
  23. 23The Poetry of Archæology
  24. 24The Art of Archæology
  25. 25Herod Suppliant
  26. 26The Tetrarch’s Remorse
  27. 27The Tetrarch’s Treasure
  28. 28Salomé Anticipates Dr. Strauss
  29. 29The Young King
  30. 30A Coronation
  31. 31The King of Spain
  32. 32A Bull Fight
  33. 33The Throne Room
  34. 34A Protected Country
  35. 35The Blackmailing of the Emperor
  36. 36Covent Garden
  37. 37A Letter from Miss Jane Percy to Her Aunt
  38. 38The Triumph of American ‘Humor’
  39. 39The Garden of Death
  40. 40An Eton Kit-Cat
  41. 41Mrs. Erlynne Exercises the Prerogative of a Grandmother
  42. 42Motherhood More Than Marriage
  43. 43The Damnable Ideal
  44. 44From a Rejected Prize-Essay
  45. 45The Possibilities of the Useful
  46. 46The Artist
  47. 47The Doer of Good
  48. 48The Disciple
  49. 49The Master
  50. 50The House of Judgment
  51. 51The Teacher of Wisdom
  52. 52Wilde Gives Directions About ‘De Profundis’
  53. 53Carey Street
  54. 54Sorrow Wears No Mask
  55. 55Vita Nuova
  56. 56The Grand Romantic
  57. 57Clapham Junction
  58. 58The Broken Resolution
  59. 59Domesticity at Berneval
  60. 60A Visit to the Pope

About this edition

Author
Oscar Wilde
Era
Modern (c. 1800–1945)
Reading level
Intermediate: some philosophy helps
Formats
EPUB, PDF
Length
122 pages
This edition
Modern Philosophers